As we begin to wrap up our first term in the Number Sense Program Lisa and I continued with our research and are making great progress towards our final project. We have found a lot of interesting information that we have been able to relate to findings from our previous lessons as well as information we believe will be helpful in future planning. This week we again structured our lessons in a way that would allow students to focus on the same skill using different sets of materials.

As we near the end of winter term, Julie and I have developed a nice routine that allows us gather and organize information and observations that directly correlate with our research project. Again this week, we had the students within a group focusing on a specific skill, using technology one day, and hands-on manipulatives the other day. Julie and I decided that for our research project we would not be identifying advantages and disadvantages of these two different learning styles, but rather collecting research and evidence to prove that both styles are most beneficial only when implemented correctly. Thus, we selected three of our students – all currently working on developing different skills – to serve as focus students for the remainder of the year. Our first focus student is continually working to master number recognition and oral counting, while our second focus student is working towards developing an understanding of numbers in terms of the values they represent. Lastly, our third focus student is working to apply his understanding of numbers through various problem solving strategies and fact families.

Following last week’s lessons, Lisa and I again hit the library to continue our research. With a much better idea of what we wanted to focus in on we were a lot more successful in our findings. Through our research and discussions we have decided to focus in one three students to use as evidence in our final paper. We choose to focus on three students that we see two times a week as well as three students that are at different levels of understanding. Our first student is still focusing on number recognition and oral counting, while our second student is working towards developing an understanding for numbers and what they represent. For this student and the four groups of students at this level we will be focusing on ten frames, comparing numbers, balancing, place value, and number patterns. Our last focus student, a student in the highest preforming group, will be challenged to apply his understanding of numbers. This student and his group members will work on problems solving strategies as well as fact families. Though we are zooning in on particular concepts and skills for each of the three levels, we will still work to correlate our lesson plans with what is being done in the classroom. The students are also not limited to the concepts and skills mentioned for their level. They will all be challenged appropriately and exposed to everything that is being covered. We planned our future lessons around this tentative structure hoping it would allow us to collect valid and reliable evidence of learning that can be applied to our research project.

This week, though not as successful as weeks prior, provided us with great evidence for future planning and our research paper. This week we again, focused on one skill for each group and planned two separate lessons—one with ipad apps and one with more hands on materials.

This week amounted to an equal feeling of frustration and optimism. For some of our students, we need to continue repeatedly practicing and working to develop their number sense, as it has not yet clicked. For a significant number of our students, however, it has been remarkable to help them work on their number sense and finally see progress as many have demonstrated an “AH-HA” moment over the past few weeks.

This week marked moments of great progress! I was overjoyed to work with the students this week and was incredibly proud to see how far they have come. It was truly rewarding to see such progress and excitement in our students. On Tuesday Lisa and I administer the Acuity assessment to Ms. Carmack’s class. We noted the results and data collected during the assessment of all students, which we will reference during future planning.

After returning back to Augie from the long holiday break, Julie and I were ready to jump back into action and continue working with our students at Longfellow. Before leaving for break, we had expressed interest in changing the focus of our observations and work for the remaining of the year; we agreed that we were both notably interested in researching the development of our students’ understanding of number sense through the use of technology versus the use of various hands on manipulatives. We were left to brainstorm and ponder this interesting question over break and consider the route we would be taking for the remainder of the year.

After a long winter break Lisa and I were eager to walk into Longfellow and begin working with our students once again. Before we departed for break Lisa and I expressed our interest in comparing how students learn when using ipad apps vs how they learn when using other manipulatives. We hope this idea will serve as the basis of our research project.

This week Lisa and I administered the ESGI assessment. The students were tested on their ability to recognize numbers 1-30, orally count to 100, compare numbers, recognize shapes, count objects, and write symbolic numbers. After each student had been tested I analyzed their scores as well as which specific numbers had been missed and which had been correctly identified. I then compared this data to my lesson notes and observations I have made thus far. The data from the assessment and my observations seemed to correlate and for the most part every student did as well as we had expected they would.

On both days this week, Mrs. Carmack and Mrs. Arnold asked Julie and I to take the Kindergarten students out into the hallway to administer the ESGI Assessment. We assessed each student to collect evidence of their current level of understanding for the following areas: number recognition, comparing numbers, shape recognition, oral sequence, one-to-one counting, and writing numbers. While we have gained a general sense of what skills our students have developed thus far, this assessment provided us with useful evidence of what our students know, and what skills we still need to review and/or introduce.